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This week on the podcast, Glenn and Daniel unwittingly produce an abundance of pull-quotes for the marketing of Zack Snyder‘s latest disposable superhero mashup. Samples for the press include, “Unrelentingly grim,” “Gal Gadot is in this movie,” and “Supes could’ve blasted his medulla oblongata”(50:38).

This week on the podcast, Glenn and Daniel had an intense, lengthy, thematically trenchant discussion about Minions. Then some villainous hackers struck and we lost most of it. So here are some highlights! (03:03).

Music for tonight’s episode is Nouela‘s cover of “Black Hole Sun“, from the film’s trailer.

Joining us for this week’s episode is Seattle artist Jason B., who will happily sell you a delightful pop-art print (or a mug) of Daniel’s mug here. Check out his other artwork and blog over at Catastrophic Shift.

The two detective characters that were name-dropped in the film were Sam Spade and Philip Marlowe (created by Raymond Chandler, whom we mistakenly mentioned instead).

We referred to a recent Cracked article about a convicted drug smuggler, now out of prison, who is now a professional speaker – that was this one, from Brian O’Dea. But we actually mixed in a detail from this article (from an anonymous writer), about how drug dealers are often not the people you expect.

We referred to the lackluster success rate of Alcoholics Anonymous – for reference, check out this NPR interview with Dr. Lance Dodes, who claims that AA’s success rate is as low as 5-10%.

This week on the podcast, Glenn and Daniel screen a subpar Sex Tape from director Jake Kasdan, and a cast they usually enjoy, including Cameron Diaz, Jason Segel, and Rob Lowe. What went so horribly, tragically, erotically wrong with this film? Tune in below – and then stay tuned as we’re joined by FilmWonk’s senior Obscure Film Correspondent, Rebekah O’Brien, who joins us to review The Purge: Anarchy(53:58).

Music for tonight’s episode is the track “Turn It Up” by Ruba, from the Sex Tape soundtrack, and the track “Drink” by Alestorm, which is not on either movie’s soundtrack, but feels anarchy-appropriate.

We made a reference to the Streisand effect, a phenomenon whereby an attempt to censor a piece of information has the unintended consequence of making that information more widely publicized. Read up on it via the link above.

This week on the podcast, Marc Webb, Andrew Garfield, and Emma Stone do whatever a spider can, and Glenn and Daniel are unimpressed. Listen below to hear why Glenn posted on Facebook that The Amazing Spider-Man 2 is “a tedious, exploitative, and aggressively stupid piece of disposable, commercial tripe” (45:05).

This episode contains even more NSFW language than usual. We were not happy campers with this film.

We didn’t realize when we compared this to Michael Bay‘s Transformers films that TASM2 was cowritten by none other than Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci, also the screenwriters behind Transformers and Transformers 2. They also cowrote last year’s Star Trek Into Darkness, which had many issues in common with this film in terms of insubstantial spectacle. We’re big fans of these guys from Alias and Fringe, but it may be time for them to return to TV for a while.

We compared the final battle with Electro to Animusic, a series of MIDI-visualization videos produced since the mid-1990s. There are plenty of them on YouTube… Here’s an example.

Matt Singer from The Dissolve and Drew McWeeny from HitFix both liked this movie better than we did, but they wrote a pair of excellent thinkpieces about what an empty spectacle like this film means for the future of cinema:

In this special TV edition of the FilmWonk Podcast, Glenn and Daniel take a deep dive into one of their favorite sitcoms, How I Met Your Mother, created by Carter Bays and Craig Thomas, which recently concluded its ninth and final season on CBS. And we had plenty to say about that ending. Spoilers for the entire series run will begin after about the 10 minute mark (55:15).

SPOILERY CORRECTION: We slightly flubbed the order of events on this. At the beginning of Season 6, Ted was revealed to be attending a wedding where he would meet The Mother. At the end of Season 6, Barney is revealed to be the groom. At the end of Season 7, Robin is revealed to be the bride. In Season 8, Robin is revealed to be having second thoughts, and Ted decides to move to Chicago.

Robin’s career vs. happiness

The “Urkelizing” of Barney Stinson

Our alternate structure for Season 9, assuming we keep the same ending.

Running gags/jokes/mythology

How well will the show hold up over time?

Correction: The final season was 24 episodes, not 22.

Correction: We made a pithy (and inaccurate) reference to Ted…mingling…with the Mother’s old roommate, Cindy. They had one date, which ended badly – while they made amends in a later episode, nothing further happened between them.

We referred to Cristin Milioti‘s lovely rendition of “La Vie En Rose” – we didn’t include it on the podcast, but it is available on YouTube as of this writing.

The long-term bet between Lily and Marshall was as follows: Marshall bet that Ted would end up with Robin. In the final episode, he is shown to pay off Lily on the day of Ted’s wedding to the mother, indicating that he lost the bet. Presumably, a refund might ensue sometime in 2030.

Listen above, or download: How I Met Your Mother(right-click, save as, or click/tap to play on a non-flash browser)

This week on the podcast, Glenn and Daniel take another angry departure from their original screening plans to check out the latest pretender to the Hunger Games throne, Divergent. Will Shailene Woodley prove a worthy contender, or will she be taken out with slings and arrows in the first round? Find out below (37:40).